There are multiple methods currently employed to limit the damage caused by an oil spill and return damaged areas to a more natural condition. These include dispersal, bio-remediation, burning, and containment and recovery of the oil. Dispersal and burning methods tend to spread out the effects of the oil spill rather than removing the oil, and bio-remediation has been found to be of limited utility in deep water. Containment and recovery is the most prevalently used method, and is often the first measure enacted when attempting to clean a spill.
To contain and recover the oil, floating barriers, called “oil booms” or simply “booms,” are positioned around the oil slick. Because the oil floats on the water, the boom contains the oil within its boundary. Thus, they serve to prevent the oil from spreading, whether to simply prevent the slick from covering a larger surface area or to protect a shoreline or nearby landmass or ecological system. Once contained, various apparatus, such as vacuum skimmers, floating disk skimmers, and rope skimmers, or oil-absorbent materials, such as talc, straw and saw dust, can be employed to physically remove the oil from the water.
Generally, oil booms consist of one or more inflatable bladders that, when inflated, are towed to surround the oil slick. A weighted barrier hangs down into the water from the inflated bladder(s), and prevents the oil from spreading. Single chamber booms consist of one bladder, and inflate quickly, although they are not very readily shaped to surround the entire slick. Additionally, steps must be taken to prevent against damage to the single bladder, because loss of pressure will cause the boom to deflate, and the oil will be more likely to spread. Multi-chamber booms, consisting of multiple, interconnected bladder sections, are much easier to shape around a spill, because some flexibility exists in the area of interconnection. But, as with the single chamber boom, steps must be taken to prevent deflation, and, as a result, current designs are arduous to inflate.
To prevent complete deflation of a multi-chamber boom, each bladder of the boom is isolated from every other bladder, and a hole in one bladder will cause only that particular bladder to deflate. This design ensures that the remainder of the boom will function efficiently, but, by sealing each bladder off from the others, it also mandates that each bladder be separately inflated when deploying the boom. Because time is a key factor in containing an oil spill and minimizing environmental impact, the multi-point inflation design for multi-chamber oil booms needs to be replaced with a single-point inflation design.